Cheating Lessons: A Novel (21 page)

If any Wall Street analysts had doubts about the health of National Computing Systems stock, its international headquarters in Southfield would help lay them to rest.

The place smelled like money.

The Executive Briefing Center on the seventeenth floor was really a tiny gem of a theater, with seating for a hundred in tiers of squashy black leather armchairs. A raised stage held two rows of polished lecterns angled to face each other, flanking a larger, single stand for the moderator. Above it all loomed a new electronic scoreboard that flashed and twinkled like a jukebox on speed. Bernadette eyed it with disfavor. It seemed more suited to Joe Louis Arena.

The room was packed. A buzz of anticipation made a wall of sound that threatened to shatter her resolution to do nothing. Her parents wished her one last “good luck,” her mother’s gaze loaded with meaning, before Bernadette escaped them and threaded her way toward her team.

Anthony’s sport coat showed several inches of bony wrist and David’s blazer overlapped his knuckles as though they’d grabbed each other’s clothes by mistake. They were sticking close together and trying to look nonchalant.

Nadine’s and Lori’s pleated skirts and sweater vests coordinated too well to be an accident. Lori’s bright hair was tucked into a demure knot, but her loose vest could not hide the figure that cheered stadium crowds every fall.

She saw Bernadette and gave a little yip. “I’m so nervous, I can’t breathe. How about you?”

Bernadette mumbled something and avoided Nadine’s eyes.

“Ah, Ms. Terrell. We knew you hadn’t gotten cold feet.”

Mr. Malory’s slow smile, the teasing tone, were just as they’d always been. Bernadette forced herself to smile back as though he still controlled her heartstrings.

“I hear I have to thank you for fetching my cat on Friday.” Mr. Malory motioned to Ms. Kestenberg out in the audience.

Beside her, Nadine went very still.

Bernadette gave a modest shrug. It had been no trouble, she said, and his little cat was darling.

Just then his attention was caught by someone behind her. Bernadette turned.

A dark-haired woman, slightly built, thirtyish, wearing an elegant black suit Bernadette could fancy herself in, had paused in the doorway. Her brilliant smile at Mr. Malory made his look dim. She carried a clipboard and a palpable aura of feminine officialdom.

Probably had a bust of, say, 34B.

Bernadette gawked. Gena was nothing like she’d imagined. For one thing, she had clothes on. For another—

“She could be your aunt,” Nadine breathed into her ear.

It was true. If they ever made a movie of Dr. Genevieve Fontaine’s life, Bernadette Terrell could play her as a teenager. Gena had the same lean frame, the same pale, fine-grained complexion, the same straight, glossy brown hair. Gena’s was cut in a gamine style Bernadette saw instantly would become her, too; and tortoiseshell glasses gave the chairwoman a look of sexy intelligence.

She even wore the besotted expression that, Bernadette realized, had been plastered across her own face every day this term. “Simpy,” Anthony had called it. It was.

She forgot she and Nadine were at odds. “It’s too bizarre,” she murmured. “She trusts him. You can tell.”

Nadine grunted without comment.

Mrs. Phoebe Hamilton swept onto the stage and rapped the microphone until it screeched. Her white hair stood out from her head like Albert Einstein’s. She might be well into her sixties, walk with a slight limp, and have a tiny beige hearing aid peeking from one ear, but she was far from retiring. Those no-nonsense eyes made Bernadette glad she hadn’t telephoned in the wee hours to tell this woman that her contest was rigged.

Everyone was directed to find a seat.

The little clumps split up as though at a wedding, Wickham supporters stage right, Pinehurst stage left. The Terrells snagged seats on the aisle with the Walczaks in the row behind them. Nearby sat Mrs. Besh, a.k.a. Miss Tanya, heavier and blonder than when she’d tried to teach Bernadette the steps to “Happy Little Clown.” Bernadette wondered where Mr. Besh was, and whether he’d been brazen enough to bring his girlfriend. There was Vince, looking clammier than Bernadette felt. He caught her eye and gave her a thumbs-up with one hand, the other hand holding a cell phone to his ear. What—oh, the bookie.

Ms. K. waved the arm without the cast. She must have driven with Spic ‘n’ Span, who gave Bernadette a bright nod and mouthed what looked like “kick butt.” Behind them sat David’s parents.

First Wickham, then Pinehurst, filed onto the stage.

The girls from Pinehurst were Madhu and Tanisha, the boys Aaron, Paul, and Glenn. Glenn Kim’s name card bore the same captain’s star as Bernadette’s. She nodded to him—he’d cross-examined her from two feet away during a debate only a few months before—but his gaze swept over her as though she were a fleck in the carpet.

“What a jerk,” she whispered to Nadine, and discovered that NCS used microphones of industrial strength. “Jerk” reverberated through the room.

Mrs. Hamilton gave her a stern look and began to introduce the NCS Research Committee. Four men, three women, none as young or attractive as their leader, Dr. Fontaine. Gena half-stood and made a slight bow. She sat beside Mr. Malory, Bernadette noticed. She wondered how they’d engineered that. Where were all the dirty minds when you needed them?

Mrs. Hamilton explained the rules.

There would be three regular rounds of thirty questions each. A Champion Round of another thirty. In the regular rounds, teams would select the categories. Six questions from five categories—three Open, for either team to try, and three Bonus, for the team that answered the previous Open question correctly. Wrong answers were deducted from a team’s score. Opens were worth twenty points; Bonus, ten. Champion Round, twenty.

We all know this. Get on with it.
Perspiration formed in little beads up high on Bernadette’s forehead. Her heart thumped as though she was actually going to compete.

“Any questions?” Mrs. Hamilton surveyed both teams through gold-rimmed bifocals.

No. Let’s go.

The world shrank to contain one white-haired woman, one cold, smooth buzzer, and the vaguely sensed presence of Nadine and Lori on either side. Mr. Malory, Bernadette’s parents, the Channel 28 cameras—everything else vanished. This was all there was.

Wickham won the toss. Mrs. Hamilton looked inquiringly at them, waiting for them to choose the category. Bernadette remained mute. With a puzzled glance her way, Anthony finally spoke up. He picked Greeks, one of his Primary categories.

On the scoreboard, Greeks went from red to green and blinked off and on. It was distracting. Bernadette kept her eyes on Mrs. Hamilton’s lips instead.

“What is the subject of Plato’s
Symposium
?” the moderator asked in her rich contralto.

Every cell in her body urged Bernadette to respond, and as she fought her instincts she had a revelation that rocked her like a voice from heaven:
It wasn’t cheating to answer questions they’d never heard.

How could she have missed that? Stolen or not, if the questions hadn’t been given to them already there was no unfair advantage. Even if
Malory
had seen them, she, Bernadette, had not, and therefore could not be held responsible. She only knew for sure that he’d stolen Romantic Poets. Fine—she would answer everything else.

This passed through her mind in less time than it took her to—
Bzzz.
“Love,” she said, and cleared her throat.

Twenty points for Wickham. Beside her, Nadine exulted. “
Yes.
”

Who stole fire, Hera’s revenge on Arachne, Phaedra’s crime in
Hippolytus
—the Wizards knew their Greeks. Watching the videotapes, Bernadette had noticed that early in each Bowl, contestants tended to pause a fraction of a second, as though verifying to themselves that, yes, they did know the answer. She did not pause. She rang in before Mrs. Hamilton could lift her eyes from the card.

Anthony got the last Bonus: “What incident started the Trojan War?”

“Paris kidnapped Helen,” he said, as though he’d hoped for something a little more challenging.

The Wickham side of the room erupted in applause.

The score was ninety to zero. No team—not even Pinehurst’s legendary National Merit Scholar squad of 1997—had ever started off with such a bang.

Across the stage Glenn Kim’s startled eyes met Bernadette’s. She looked right through him but inside she was singing. Any thoughts of Mr. Malory were buried for the moment by the intense satisfaction of doing what she did best—competing.

The New Testament. Proverbs and Sayings. (Here Bernadette shone, helped by years of Martha-isms.) American Novels. Shakespeare. Pinehurst’s Madhu called one of King Lear’s daughters “Cornelia.”

Anthony buzzed in. “Regan, Goneril, and Cordelia,” he said politely. Plus twenty for Wickham, negative twenty for Pinehurst. Yes!

Mrs. Hamilton gave them a queenly smile.

Buzzing in, watching Pinehurst squirm, hearing Lori’s whispered “Way to go”—sent adrenaline racing through Bernadette. It was as though she’d broken through to a new dimension, where all the good weapons belonged to her. They’d never heard these questions. You couldn’t call this cheating.

At the end of Round One it was Wickham 250, Pinehurst 140. Pinehurst wore the same expression St. John’s School for the Gifted had worn in the video: stunned.

“Bravo! That was wonderful.” Mr. Malory joined them onstage during the break between rounds. “Team, what can I say? You were all magnificent.”

His eyes were bright and excited, and for an instant the old thrill coursed through Bernadette at the way he said “team” while his smile spoke to her alone. Behind him Gena mooned over her clipboard. Bernadette flinched. It was like looking in a funhouse mirror.

In Round Two, David came in. Nadine punched Bernadette’s arm as she went to sit out. “Nail ’em, Bet,” she murmured with all the killer instinct any partner could want.

Nadine didn’t have to worry. Bernadette’s cheeks blazed. Her fingers yearned to press the buzzer over and over again; 290 points, wham! She hadn’t touched
Of Mice and Men
since freshman year.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Bam! Take that, you purple punks.

Pinehurst must have been threatened with community college during the break, because they came back raring to buzz. Paul, the boy with chipmunk cheeks, chose the Restoration. He smirked at Bernadette as if to say,
Watch this.

She leaned forward.

It was painful, but impressive. Paul knew who wrote
Mac Flecnoe.
He knew Christian was the hero of
The Pilgrim’s Progress.
He and Aaron named Congreve characters as if they were old friends.

Bernadette wanted to howl. She knew all that, too, and if only she could have buzzed in she’d have proven it to the Channel 28 audience and the world. But now it was Pinehurst that had caught Mrs. Hamilton’s rhythm. They couldn’t seem to put a finger wrong.

Until . . . they choked on the Dryden poem describing the Popish Plot of 1678.

“Wickham?” Mrs. Hamilton asked.

There were no movies of Dryden. The Wizards looked to Bernadette.

“
Absalom and Achitophel.
” She mangled the title so that it came out like an obscene sneeze, but Mrs. Hamilton nodded confirmation.

Boom! Another ten points.

Time speeded up. She couldn’t spare a second for the scoreboard. Just buzz, get in, answer . . . .

Maybe Mr. Malory had changed his mind . . . maybe he
couldn’t
stoop so low . . . thank God I didn’t tell anyone who mattered . . .
Bzzz—
”He shot a buffalo,” twenty points, all right, let’s beat the pants off these . . . “Sisyphus” . . . look at Anthony grinning, no one can say we don’t deserve . . . get it, Nadine, it’s Tennyson . . . Twinkie that, Glenn Kim . . . did they give you the ten thousand dollars up front or did they send it to your college . . . Grendel! Ha! Too bad, Madhu, let’s try—
Bzzz—
”Grendel’s mother” . . . oh, David, Becky Sharp, good for you . . . Aaron’s a bum, that’s three in a row he’s missed . . . did you hear your daughter quote Whitman, Mr. Besh, you sneaky rat . . .
What
did the Green Knight almost cut off Gawain? She can’t mean—oh, his head . . . that’s all right, that’s all right, we’ll get the next one . . .

The Wizards could win this thing.

After Round Three the score was Wickham 650, Pinehurst 590. There hadn’t been a single question they had heard before.

The thin skin on Mrs. Hamilton’s cheeks glowed, and her thoughts were easy to guess. What a pleasure to watch neatly dressed young people clawing over some decent books. Well, Bernadette thought, they’d tried to give her her money’s worth.

Mrs. Hamilton announced a five-minute intermission. When they returned they would tackle the Champion Round, whose three judge-selected categories were even now blinking at them from the scoreboard like a cheer.

Romans!!!

Novels in Translation!!!

Romantic Poets!!!

Bernadette’s gut muscles contracted. Romantic Poets? Her eyes flew to where Mr. Malory leaned back in his chair, his legs crossed at the ankles, his hands making a steeple in front of his chin. His Wizards would now mow the weasely enemy down like the armies of Macduff.

He caught her eye, and winked.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

You’ll find us rough, sir, but you’ll find us ready.

—Charles Dickens,
David Copperfield

“I
’m
not sitting out.” Lori’s shrill response to Bernadette’s suggestion was attracting stares. “Romantic Poets are
mine.
”

“All right, all right, hush up. What are Novels in Translation?”

“We called them World Literature.” Mr. Malory had come up onstage. “Voltaire, Stendhal, Flaubert. Probably
Don Quixote.
”

“More Russians?” Nadine asked.

“Probably. There’s been no Dostoyevsky so far.”